Quake3World

Valve/tube amps VS transistors seems a bit like the Vinyl VS tape/cd/mp3 debate ?.

Without knowing an awful lot I'd be willing to bet that in the upper price brackets a transistor amp will be just as good ?, or is it really industry accepted and any amp in that price bracket needs valves to be competitive ?

/Is intrigued by the use of Valve tech :]

I like how plained describes amp parts as chick-let sized or caterpillar shit sized. I'm not against pedals in principle, I just think Boss ones are on the cheap end and it's too bad that so many people flock to them without doing a bit of looking around, or just assume they are the cat's ass when they really aren't. There's lots of other great stuff out there. But, then again, I've seen Satch using Boss pedals so who knows. Beauty is in the ear of the beholder.

@loschunk: Eh...it's not that cut and dried. Solid state amps were basically invented to try and mirror tube technology, minus the maintenance of the actual tubes (they burn out, they can shatter, etc.) Transistor amps simply sound different. Transistors amplify odd-order harmonics whereas tubes amplify even-order harmonics (look up the natural harmonic series to see what I mean.) Also, tubes have natural overdrive and compression which sounds very organic and fun to play with. Overdrive introduces pleasing harmonic distortion into the signal, based on the type of tube and its rating. Compression is just... compression, but instead of it being done by a robot digital compressor, it's done instead by purely physical means, the tubes, so you get this very nice, soft, cushy sound. It's hard to describe...

Some bands use solid state amps and you can buy amps that have mixed technology. One of my amps has an option for a solid state power rectifier, rather than a tube-based power rectifier. The solid state one reacts faster. If you hit a big chord with the amp up loud, it can draw current from the power transformer quickly and actually supply it to the speakers. With tube-based rectification, you get what's called "sag", where the power section will actually fade out for a short but noticeable period of time while the tube rectifiers go "holy fuck, that's a lot of power, hold on here!" Some people like the "sag", it just depends on your style. Metal guys want transistor rectification because it tracks fast (chugga-chugga-chugga-chugga, etc.) whereas most other styles can do fine with tube rectos. You can also get amps with a tube-based pre-amp and a solid state power amp.

If you wanna see what solid state guitar amps sound like, go look up Meshuggah. Sorry, I'm a metal head so that's the only band I can think of that uses solid state amps at the moment. You can certainly get some good tones with them, but there is a reason that most pro acts still use 100% tube based amps.

Brian May is actually very light on pedals. He barely uses them. He just has his triple channel Vox AC30 amp setup with his signature delay stuff hooked up and a wah pedal. That's basically it. Oh yeah he also uses treble boosters.

Cheers for the reply . That's actually pretty interesting, I thought impedance would be the major difference with that actually being a disadvantage but there's difference in the amplification too !

I shall look into it, when my head isn't banging. My grandad built a shitload of radios using valves so when I found out they still use them I got a bit excited lol.

and cool eraser, I just knew about his guitar being built from a fireplace with his dad

eraser so what u are saying is brian may used pedals

yea i know along with everybody else!

seriously tho i would love love love a fractal fx 2 , i think it would be wicked from what ive heard.

i'm just a shit couch player i cant justify getting one for myself, hopefully one of my kids get into it then ey, no problem justifying it, i'll get one the next day!

even with the most awesome toni'est amp (blackface twin/deluxe reverb, marshall jmp, superbass ...etc

a good pedal will enhance things, seriosly!

Shit, te laat, maar toch nog gefeliciteerd hè!!

omg, het leeft!

thx

Ffs heb je deze mongool ook weer.

WB phoq

Just passing?

Don't make me get Samuel

Samuel losCHUNK?

I don't understand?

Anyway the mention of valve amplifiers earlier made me
I remember many youth filled classes, hours spent learning (trying to understand) initially valve theory but then early transistor theory.

Who could forget hole and electron movement in/across semi conductor materials?

Reminiscing then explored briefly and found this wiki and this too for your reading pleasure.